Mass Communications Founding Father
Wilbur Schramm is considered the father of Communication studies. His ground breaking work laid the foundation for our modern study in the field. Wilbur Schramm Wilbur Schramm was born in Marietta, OH in 1907. Schramm's father was a lawyer and had plans for his son to follow suit by entering into either law or politics. Unfortunately Wilbur at an early age developed a stutter which left him incredibly shy making it almost impossible for him to speak in public. Luckily, Schramm was able to find creative ways around his stuttering problem and fear of public speaking to still be highly successful as a student earning his undergrad degree in History and Political Science and his Master's in American Civilization from Harvard. Schramm then moved onto the University of Iowa where he worked closely with Lee Edward Travis and Wendell Johnson on research involving his stutter. Travis' work and therapy with Schramm led to his stutter being helped. Travis' research approached the problem of stuttering as communication problem which influenced Schramm and motivated his interest in studying the field of communication. For this Schramm was moving into what was for the most part uncharted territory at the time. Schramm concocted his vision for study during WWII while working for the OFF/OWI. There Schramm and a group of international talent who studied communication conducted research into what information should and shouldn't be communicated, it's effect on the masses and which channels were best to properly use to convey these messages. Schramm took the ideas and research conducted on the OWI with him back to the University of Iowa where he landed a position in the Department of Journalism which allowed him to push his agenda of Communication studies further establishing the first Doctoral program in Communication studies. From the success of his time as the Director of School of Journalism at University of Iowa, Schramm moved on to University of Illinois where he spearheaded the Institute of Communications Research. Here communications doctoral students could receive training in the field and learned ways to implement a social science approach to communications studies. Through his work with the research institute and as assistant to the President of the university Schramm was able to create and run the Division of Communications at University of Illinois. Sadly, the president had made promises to Schramm as to how far he would be able to expand the program which fell short due to budget issues. Schramm eventually resigned his position and moved around to Stanford University, East-West Communications Institute of Hawaii and the Chinese University of Hong Kong. The contributions made by Schramm to the field of Communications are responsible for the field being able to thrive and grow into the area of study we know today. Schramm Model One of Schramm's major contributions to the field of Communication is the Schramm Model. The model was originally created by Shannon & Weaver. There initial model was developed while doing research for Bell Laboratories. They broke down communication to a Sender Message Receiver Model (SMR) this model suggests that a person creates and sends a message that is then received and interpreted by an end user. This model was then augmented by David Berlo. Berlo added the new aspect of a Channel to the model. This takes into account how the message is delivered and how the channel would affect the way the message is received. Schramm again added to the model by introducing the idea of feedback. In this case, the model is no longer simply linear. The idea of feedback allows the model to work in a circular manner. Schramm's model suggests that both sender and receiver can serve in either role as an encoder or decoder of a message. Citation Rogers, E. M. (1997). Wilbur Schramm and the founding of communication study. In A history of communication study: A biographical approach (pp. 1-29). New York: The Free Press http://www.kkhsou.in/main/masscom/communication_model1.html